We’re not sure how many more Nürburgring-Nordschleife records we can take this year. We’ve already seen the SEAT Leon Cupra and Renaultsport Megané battling it out, with the Honda Civic Type-R waiting in the wings. Now Land Rover has claimed the fastest lap for a SUV with the forthcoming hottest Range Rover Sport model.

Land Rover claims that the Range Rover Sport SVR used to set the record lap of 8 minutes 14 seconds was a standard production version. Although in the world of Nürburgring-records, the word “standard” seems to have a fairly loose interpretation – see SEAT’s “performance pack” fitted to the Leon Cupra for example.

But regardless, the Range Rover SVR has been hustled – quite bravely – to a lap time quicker than a wide array of dedicated performance vehicles if the records on Wikipedia are anything to go by. But with a 550 PS (543 bhp) 5.0 litre supercharged V8 and engineering by the Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations team, you’d expect the SVR to be effective.

Although it’s meant to be the most performance Range Rover Sport yet, it still retains the high/low ratio gear ratios and 850 mm wading depth of the normal RRS. We would question just how useful track biased tyres would be in the rough stuff though. Still, at least it sounds good:

The SVR isn’t set to arrive in showrooms until 2015, which means we can probably expect Land Rover to spend several more months hammering it around the Nürburgring.